1958: UFO Censorship On TV

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1958: UFO Censorship On TV
Posted On: June 21, 2022

The Year Was: 1958. The place, United States. A CBS program about UFOs was heavily censored. The public never was able to see anything close to the original show.


On January 22nd, 1958, CBS Television presented a program devoted to UFOs on its "Armstrong Circle Theater Show," and one of those invited to appear was Major Donald Keyhoe, Director of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP).


Keyhoe had cultivated some excellent sources of information within military circles, and had frequently stated on the air, and in his books, that the US government was withholding the facts in order to avoid panic.


Several Air Force spokesmen were also scheduled to appear, but insisted on seeing Keyhoe's script in advance and asked for assurances that no "ad libs" would be permitted.


Keyhoe was also told that he would be allotted seven minutes on the program, whereas the Air Force had been given twenty-five minutes air time. When Keyhoe's material was returned, all the salient points had been deleted on the grounds that the script was too long, despite the fact that he had carefully timed it.


But Keyhoe had retained one statement, which he planned using: "There is an official policy, believed in the best interests of the people, not to confirm the existence of UFOs until all the answers are known. Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, former chief of Project Blue Book, has confirmed the existence of four important documents that should be noted. In 1948, in a Top Secret estimate, the ATIC [Air Technical Intelligence Center] concluded that UFOs were interplanetary spaceships. In 1952, an Air Force Intelligence analysis of UFO maneuvers brought the same conclusion, interplanetary. In January 1953 a report by a panel of top scientists at the Pentagon reached this conclusion: There is strong circumstantial evidence, but no concrete proof that UFOs are spaceships."


Keyhoe was told that he could not use this statement. The final show was a farce, bearing little relation to the program as originally conceived, with the Air Force spokesmen concentrating on some of the sillier stories of contacts with spacemen.


By the time Keyhoe appeared with his heavily edited script, little could be done to salvage the situation. But in desperation he suddenly veered from his script on the teleprompter:


"And now I'm going to reveal something that has never been disclosed before, for the last six months we have been working with a congressional committee investigating official secrecy about UFOs."


But by now the producer had cut the audio off the air, and the public never heard Keyhoe's concluding statement: "If all the evidence we have given this committee is made public in open hearings it will absolutely prove that the UFOs are real machines under intelligent control."


NICAP later obtained a statement from the CBS Director of editing, Herbert A. Carlborg, which proves that Major Keyhoe was cut off the air in the interests of security.


"This program had been carefully screened for security reasons," he said.


"Therefore, it was the responsibility of this network to ensure performance that was in accordance with predetermined security standards. Any indication that there would be a deviation from the script might lead to a statement that neither this network nor the individuals on the program were authorized to release."


Resources: Above Top Secret, Timothy Good, 1988.


My Take: How can there be National Security on a subject that officially is nothing more than swamp gas and the planet Venus? Obviously there is a lot more to it. A note to big brother. Enough is enough, time for disclosure.



[BACK]
1958: UFO Censorship On TV
Posted On: June 21, 2022

The Year Was: 1958. The place, United States. A CBS program about UFOs was heavily censored. The public never was able to see anything close to the original show.


On January 22nd, 1958, CBS Television presented a program devoted to UFOs on its "Armstrong Circle Theater Show," and one of those invited to appear was Major Donald Keyhoe, Director of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP).


Keyhoe had cultivated some excellent sources of information within military circles, and had frequently stated on the air, and in his books, that the US government was withholding the facts in order to avoid panic.


Several Air Force spokesmen were also scheduled to appear, but insisted on seeing Keyhoe's script in advance and asked for assurances that no "ad libs" would be permitted.


Keyhoe was also told that he would be allotted seven minutes on the program, whereas the Air Force had been given twenty-five minutes air time. When Keyhoe's material was returned, all the salient points had been deleted on the grounds that the script was too long, despite the fact that he had carefully timed it.


But Keyhoe had retained one statement, which he planned using: "There is an official policy, believed in the best interests of the people, not to confirm the existence of UFOs until all the answers are known. Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, former chief of Project Blue Book, has confirmed the existence of four important documents that should be noted. In 1948, in a Top Secret estimate, the ATIC [Air Technical Intelligence Center] concluded that UFOs were interplanetary spaceships. In 1952, an Air Force Intelligence analysis of UFO maneuvers brought the same conclusion, interplanetary. In January 1953 a report by a panel of top scientists at the Pentagon reached this conclusion: There is strong circumstantial evidence, but no concrete proof that UFOs are spaceships."


Keyhoe was told that he could not use this statement. The final show was a farce, bearing little relation to the program as originally conceived, with the Air Force spokesmen concentrating on some of the sillier stories of contacts with spacemen.


By the time Keyhoe appeared with his heavily edited script, little could be done to salvage the situation. But in desperation he suddenly veered from his script on the teleprompter:


"And now I'm going to reveal something that has never been disclosed before, for the last six months we have been working with a congressional committee investigating official secrecy about UFOs."


But by now the producer had cut the audio off the air, and the public never heard Keyhoe's concluding statement: "If all the evidence we have given this committee is made public in open hearings it will absolutely prove that the UFOs are real machines under intelligent control."


NICAP later obtained a statement from the CBS Director of editing, Herbert A. Carlborg, which proves that Major Keyhoe was cut off the air in the interests of security.


"This program had been carefully screened for security reasons," he said.


"Therefore, it was the responsibility of this network to ensure performance that was in accordance with predetermined security standards. Any indication that there would be a deviation from the script might lead to a statement that neither this network nor the individuals on the program were authorized to release."


Resources: Above Top Secret, Timothy Good, 1988.


My Take: How can there be National Security on a subject that officially is nothing more than swamp gas and the planet Venus? Obviously there is a lot more to it. A note to big brother. Enough is enough, time for disclosure.



1958: UFO Censorship On TV

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